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Monthly Archives: February 2012

ATTALLA, Ala. (AP) — Roger Simpson said he looked down the road and saw a little girl running outside her home but didn’t give it another thought. Police, however, said the man witnessed a murder in progress.

Authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. Severely dehydrated, the girl had a seizure and died days later. Now, her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment were taken to jail Wednesday and face murder charges.

Man Steve, I eventually got a hold on those new school bullies, but not like you did. You really gave it to them. Where is the girlfriend now, do you know?

By Steve Easton

Dragged to a new house, a new school with a sister who had flipped. I’d turned 12 and she was 10. I tried to be a nice and took her fishing with me and some friends I’d made in my new school. We fished while my sister petted a cat she’d found, and then she grabbed the cat, put it in the water and held it under. I rescued the cat and took my sister home. I told my parents: that was the first time they locked my sister in her bedroom.
The next few months were horrendous; I missed Niav and was really unhappy.
We went on holiday and my dad took me out into the country then raped me, then in a fit of remorse threatened to kill me and then himself. It hurt like hell and I bleed for days.
My mother, who was dying as usual, was on bucket loads of pills. I started to steal her sleeping pills, Nembutal and Mandrax (Quaaludes) because I couldn’t sleep but quickly discovered they were much nicer if you stayed awake. This was the 1960’s, longhaired hippies, free festivals in the parks and a commune round the corner from my parents house. It leaked music and people with long hair and beads. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, the Byrds. The music spoke to me and the hippies spoke to me; within days I’d become a regular visitor.
I knew this wasn’t a good place to be hanging around but it was far better than being at home. It didn’t feel safe but not in the way home was unsafe: some of these young people were pretty crazy. There was Gene, who said he was a Canadian but turned out to be an American deserter from the Vietnam War and Paul who had long hair and beads. Karen who was everybody’s girl friend. She was 16 and really pretty, with hennaed hair and she always smelt of petiole oil: and Scott who was a refugee from the draft. Other people came and went, there was always music, sometimes food, sometimes booze and sometimes drugs. One evening I walked in and Gene was injecting what I later discovered to be heroin. They quickly discovered I could get large quantities of pills and Gene taught me how to smoke mandrax. I fell in love with the effect it was the best feeling in the world. It made me feel relaxed, calm and peaceful. Smoking mandies made everything feel perfect and even today after over 30 years of abstinence I still remember and miss that wonderful feeling like it was yesterday.
One “joint” (a mixture of crushed mandrax and tobacco) and all the pain went away and I started on the downhill tumble into addiction that saved my life. This might sound odd but by twelve I seriously needed emotional painkillers, the only other ways out were suicide or insanity.
Considering my circumstances I surprisingly still loved learning (I was and still am insatiably curious about almost everything). I nearly always went to school and got on well with my teachers. School felt like a safe haven and going to school meant that I didn’t tumble into addiction fast. Over the next few years I went to school drugged and I went to school drunk but I still went to school. Being bright and loving learning meant teachers cut me some slack. Having an alcoholic headmaster, who was regularly drunk in school and organized class trips to the local brewery, was a God send. One day before he came in to take a class we made all the lights swing in unison; he walked in looked at the lights, clutched his forehead, turned on his heals and walked out again. Many years later I ran in to his daughter in New York City, then back in the UK myself and my wife attended her wedding reception. He recognized me and straightened my tie; I was always very scruffy at school. He was so drunk he had to give his speech sitting on the stairs. Sadly a couple of years later he succeeded in drinking himself to death.
School had sussed things weren’t right at home. I had written this long project on the Industrial Revolution and my sister went mad one evening and had gone through the house destroying everything to do with school. When asked where my project was I simply said my sister had torn it up. My parents were called into school and flatly denied my sister had done this. So for a few days I was in deep shit both at home and in school; but my sister was in the same school so it soon became apparent that she had destroyed all her own school stuff and I was telling the truth. They tried to refer my sister to an Educational Psychologist but my parents refused to let her go.
I drifted between home, the commune and school. Sometimes I went home, sometimes I’d sleep at home, sometimes at the commune and sometimes at friends. I’d get high when I could get the pills and I started to learn the joys of drinking whiskey. Things at home were bad, really bad, I was no longer being sexually abused but my sister was in a desperate state. One day she scrubbed her vagina raw with wire wool. She became obsessed with cleanliness and started washing her hands for hours on end. My mother dealt with this by tying her hands behind her back and locking her in her bedroom and I know today that for her the sexual abuse continued.
I’m not sure why but the rape was the last time I was abused. Maybe it was because I’d started to get handy with my fists and anything else I could use as a weapon, maybe they got scared I’d tell or maybe they only liked little boys who didn’t have pubic hair.

In recent days and weeks, there have been several sensational stories in the news that have shined the light brightly on the issues of child abuse and neglect. The punishment of an adopted child with hot sauce and cold showers, the increase of child trafficking surrounding the Super Bowl, a doctor who was charged with child rape and sexual assault, and even an undercover sting operation involving child prostitution just this past week.

All have triggered strong public reaction. The case of the adopted Russian child punished with hot sauce even caused an international response and resulted in child abuse charges.

In response, we have seen the public apologies. We have seen the moral outrage. We have seen denial and defense of actions. We have seen the all-too-common labeling of “bad” parents. We have seen blame laid on the failure of the system. And we have even seen refusal by some to acknowledge what is obviously happening right in front of them.

She faces misdemeanor charges in Chatham of violating a city ordinance, possessing less than an ounce of marijuana and giving a false name to police, for which her bond was set at $1,850.

But felony charges await her in Cobb County, where she will be extradited.

Segrest is accused of taking at least $30,000 in return for allowing a pedophile to repeatedly molest her two daughters, starting when they were 5 and 6 years old, the Marshals Service said.

The sexual abuse began in February 2004 while Segrest was in jail on theft charges, America’s Most Wanted said. Her sister, Rebecca Wiggins, had custody of the girls in Cobb County.

Wiggins was convicted in August of sexual exploitation of a child, aggravated sodomy, child molestation and first-degree child cruelty for providing the girls to a private tutor named David Ray for cash, the MDJ said.

It amazes me that Steve can take something so horrible and transition into other things that are so relative to his survival of such nightmares. Steve grows and seems to gain strength in every piece. I wish i had written my story with some of the wisdom Steve imparts in his. We look forward to reading his book one day. as with all our stories, it is hard to say how good it is given the subject matter. Thanks again Steve.

Thunder Storms Steve Easton

My dad used to come into my bedroom at night and make me suck his penis – he’d cuddle me and play with my penis first but ultimately he would orally rape me. I don’t remember this clearly but I have flashes of memory going back to early childhood; like black and white film stills. Ok I’m over it, I sleep ok today though I’ve recently been monitoring my sleep with a gadget called My Zeno Mobile (I fully admit being a gadget addict); interestingly I get plenty of REM sleep but very little deep sleep and wake a lot in my nice quite comfortable Bedroom so maybe deep down somewhere I still think my dad might visit me in the night.

I sleep well in tents – when we fostered teenage mums and babies I moved into a tent in the garden to escape the babies crying and the groaning of the teenager getting up to feed her. I spent the best part of a year out there and only remember being woken up twice in all that time. One night I heard a strange scraping noise going round and round the tent, a scary sort of sound when you’re fast asleep. I shot out of my sleeping bag grabbed my flash light and, stark naked, ran round the tent trying to find what was making the noise: it turned out to be a hedgehog, thankfully teenagers are not prone to midnight wandering. Then one autumn night an owl started hooting. It went on and on. Now I like owls but I like my sleep so I went out and shooed it away. An hour later it was back hooting like mad; I shooed it away: 20 minutes later it was back, I climbed out of my sleeping bag and waved it away again … this went on till dawn. Mind you it was a beautiful owl and I consider myself lucky to live with a garden full of wildlife.

I sleep well on planes though this can cause problems. On a long flight into Adelaide (Australia) on the last leg I had a row of seats to myself so I lifted the arm rests and climbed into my sleeping bag and feel asleep. Now bear in mind that I was flying with Garuda which has one of the worlds worst safety record among national carriers. The next thing I knew was we hit the runway hard and I rolled off the seats and got jammed in the space between my seat and the seats in front and had to be pulled out by the cabin crew who though it was really funny.

I sleep well on trains. In fact I love trains and have travelled on them all over the world. Travelling north from San Francisco to Eugene, I slept well in my seat and woke up in a snow storm in the Cascades. Crossing Canada from Halifax, via Toronto, to Vancouver, 5 great nights sleep in a gorgeous 1955 stainless steel train in my own couchette. (Sadly this train no longer runs all the way). The Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Spring with a wood lined bedroom and a piano bar: again another good nights sleep. The train from Bangkok to Singapore was less comfortable and a bit noisy as sleeping arrangements consisted of tiers of bunks 3 high on each side of the carriage and there was a group of Malayan gymnasts, on their way to a competition, who practiced all day and night in the aisle: I still slept ok. More recently on the train from Amritsar to Delhi (which had been blown up a few times) traveling with my 14 year old daughter, my wife and her wheel chair, I still slept well: though traveling in the upper birth on the “Super Fast” train, between Agra (where we’d been to visit the Taj Mahal) and Mumbai, which shook so much that I had to say awake and hold on so I didn’t fly off the bunk.

I sleep well in hotels even when watching rats run across the beams over my head in a “hotel” made out of bamboo on the border between Thai, Laos and Burma in the Golden Triangle. Though I was somewhat disturbed when in a rather nice (well nice for $2 a night) Indian hotel in the middle of the night I found the owner searching under my bed at 3am. He explained he needed his shoes! Then in Massawa (Eritrea), a small bomb damaged town on the Red Sea, I slept well in a cockroach infested room following visiting Haile Selassie’s bombed out winter palace and eating the best fish supper in the world surrounded by stray cats. In fact I discovered cockroaches have beautiful colored shells all luminescent greens and blues.

Best of all for a good nights sleep is a thunder storm, in my bedroom, in a hotel even in a tent, a thunderstorm guarantees a good nights sleep. The downside is I like watching thunderstorms and apparently missed some beauties. Once camping on Dartmoor (a high moor in the English County of Devon) I slept through what my wife said was the most amazing storm she’d seem. Even with the tent door wide open I snored all the way through it: she didn’t take kindly to me complaining that she hadn’t woken me.
In my own bed I’m ok if I have my teddy, Roosevelt (bought for me by my wife and daughter because I never had one as a child) and if things get bad in my head I also have an imaginary dragon, Teasel, who protects me from my dad. He doesn’t burn him to death but just scares him enough to make him stay away. Or I switch on the thunderstorm app on my iPhone though it doesn’t work that well because I can’t turn it up very load as my family don’t seem to have may ability to sleep through thunderstorms.